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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

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AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BY 



Abraham Lincoln, 



BEFORE THE 



Springfield WaslilDgtonlan Temperance \)OClety 




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LINCOLN IN 1842. 



At the Second Presbyterian Church. 

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, 

O9 tl?e 22d Day of pebmary, 1842. 



SPRINGFIELD : 

O. H. OLDROYD PUBLISHER. 



John .Vorrie Company. Printers, Chicago. 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BY 



Abraham Lincoln. 



BEFORE THE 



Springfield WasMngtonlan Temperance {society, 




SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
SPRINGFIELD, ILL.. 1842. 



AT THE Second Presbyterian church. 



SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, 



Dn the 2 2d day nf February; 134 2, 



Copyright, 1889, 

by o. h. oldroyd, publisher. 

springfield, ill. 






84 AN * ADDRESS, 

1 H-s. o 

AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE SPRINGFIELD WASHINGTONIAN 
TEMPERANCE SOCIETY, AT THE SECOND PRESBYTER- 
IAN CHURCH, ON THE 2 2D DAY OF FEBRUARY, 
1842, BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ESQ. 

Although the Temperance Cause has been in progress 
for nearly twenty years, it is apparent to all that it is just 
now being crowned with a degree of success, hitherto 
unparalleled. 

'The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions 
of fifties, of .hundreds, and of thousands. The cause 
itself seems suddenly transformed from a cold abstract 
theory, to a living, breathing, active and powerful chief- 
tain, going forth " conquering and to conquer." The 
citadels of his great adversary are daily being stormed 
and dismantled ; his temples and his altars, where the 
rites of his idolatrous worship have long been performed, 
and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be 
made, are daily desecrated and deserted. The trump of 
the conqueror's fame is sounding from hill to hill, from 
sea to sea, and from land to land, and calling millions to 
his standard at a blast. 

For this new and splendid success we heartily rejoice. 
That that success is so much greater now, than hereto- 
fore, is doubtless owing to rational causes ; and if we 
would have it continue, we shall do well to inquire what 
those causes are. 



AN AnDRE:SS. 85 

The warfare heretofore washed aofainst the demon 
diitempr ance, has, somehow or other, been erroneous 
Either the champions engaged, or the tactics they 
adopted, have not been the most proper. These cham- 
pions, for the most part, have been preachers, lawyers and 
hired agents ; between these and the mass of mankind, 
there is a want of approachability, if the term be admis- 
sible, partial at least, fatal to their success. They are 
"supposed to have no sympathy of feeling or interest 
with those very persons whom it is their object to con- 
vince and persuade. 

And again,, it is so easy and so common to ascribe 
motives to men of these classes, other than those they 
profess to act upon. The preacher, it is said, advocates 
temperance because he is a fanatic, and .desires a union 
of the church and state ; the lawyer from his pride, and 
vanity of hearing himself speak ; and the hired agent 
for his salary. 

But when one who has lono- been known as a victim 
of intemperance bursts the fetters that have bound him, 
and appears before his neighbors "clothed and in his right 
mind," a redeemed specimen of long-lost humanity, and 
stands up with tears of joy trembling in his eyes, to 
tell of the miseries once endured, now to be endured no 
more forever, of his once naked and starving children, 
now clad and fed comfortably, of a wife, long weighed 
down with woe, weeping, and a broken heart, now 
restored to health, happiness and a renewed affection, and 
how easily it is all done, once it is resolved to be done ; 
how simple his language ; there is a logic and an eloquence 
in it that few with human feeling:* can resist. They can- 



86 .^^ ADDRESS. 

not say that he desires a union of church and state, for 
he is not a church-member; they cannot say he is vain of 
hearing himself speak, for his whole demeanor shows he 
would gladly avoid speaking at all ; they cannot say he 
speaks for pay, for he receives none, and asks for none. 
Nor can his sincerity in any wa}^ be doubted, or his sym- 
pathy for those he would persuade to imitate his example 
be denied. 

In my judgment it is to the battles of this new class 
of champions that our late success is greatly, perhaps 
chiefly, owing. But had the old-school champions them- 
selves been of the most wise selecting? Was their 
system of tactics the most judicious ? It seems to me it 
was not. Too much denunciation against dram-sellers 
and dram-drinkers was indulged in. This, I think, was 
both impolitic and unjust. It was impolitic, because it is 
not much in the nature of man to be driven to anything ; 
still less to be driven about that which is exclusively 
his own business ; and least of all, where such driving is to 
be submitted to at the expense of pecuniary interest, or 
burning appetite. When the dram-seller and drinker 
were incessantly told, not in the accents of entreaty and 
persuasion, diffidently addressed by erring man to an 
erring brother, but in the thundering tones of anathema 
and denunciation, with which the lordly judge often 
groups together all the crimes of the felon's life, and 
thrusts them in his face just ere he passes sentence of 
death upon him, that they were the authors of all the 
vice and misery and crime in the land ; that they were the 
manufacturers and material of all the thieves and robbers 
and murderers that infest the earth : that their houses 



AN ADDRESS. 87 

were the work-shops of the devil, and that their persons 
should be shunned by all the good and virtuous, as moral 
pestilences, — I say, when they were told all this, and in 
this way, it is not wonderful that they were slow, very 
slow, to acknowledge the truth of such denunciations, 
and to join the ranks of their denouncers, in a hue and 
cry against themselves. 

To have expected them to do otherwise than they did 
— to have expected them not to meet denunciation with 
denunciation, crimination with crimination, and anathema 
with anathema, — was to expect a reversal of human 
nature, which is God's decree, and can never be reversed. 

When the conduct of men is desio^ned to be influ 
enced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should 
ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, " that 
a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall." 
So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first 
convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is 
a drop of honey that catches his heart ; which, say what 
he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, 
when once gained, you will find but little trouble in con- 
vincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if, 
indeed, that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, 
assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his 
action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, 
and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues 
to his head and his heart, and though your cause be naked 
truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder 
than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and 
though you throw it with more than herculean force and 
precision, you shall be no more able to pierce him, than 



88 AN ADDRESS. 

to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye-straw. 
Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who 
would lead him, even to his own best interests. 

On this point, the Washingtonians greatly excel the 
temperance advocates of former times. Those whom 
they desire to convince and persuade are their old friends 
and companions. They know they are not demons, nor 
even the worst of men ; they know that generally they 
are kind, generous and charitable, even beyond the 
example of their more staid and sober neighbors. They 
are practical philanthropists ; and they glow with a gen- 
erous and brotherly zeal, that mere theorizers are incap- 
able of feeling. Benevolence and charity possess their 
hearts entirely ; and out of the abundance of their hearts 
their tongues give utterance, " Love through all their 
actions run, and all their words are mild :" in this spirit 
they speak and act, and in the same they are heard and 
regarded. And when such is the temper of the advocate, 
and such of the audience, no good cause can be unsuc- 
cessful. But I have said that denunciations against dram- 
sellers and dram-drinkers are unjust, as well as impolitic. 
Let us see. 

I have not inquired at what period of time the use of 
intoxicating liquors commenced ; nor is it important to 
know. It is sufficient that to all of us who now inhabit 
the world, the practice of drinking them is just as old as 
the world itself — that is, we have seen the one, just as long 
as we have seen the other. When all such of us as have 
now reached the years of maturity, first opened our eyes 
upon the stage of existence, we found intoxicating liquors 
recognized by everybody, used by everybody, repudiated 



AN ADDRESS. 89 

by nobody. It cominonly entered into the first draught 
of the infant, and the last draught of the dying man. 
From the sideboard of the parson, down to the ragged 
pocket of the houseless loafer, it was consta.itly found. 
Physicians prescribed it, in this, that and the other 
disease ; Government provided it for soldiers and sailors ; 
and to have a rolling or raising, a husking or " hoe-down " 
anywhere about without it, was positively unsufferable. 
So too, it was everywhere a respectable article of manu- 
facture and of merchandise. The makinir of it was 
regarded as an honorable livelihood, and he could make 
most, was the most enterprising and respectable. Large 
and small manufactories of it were everywhere erected, 
in which all the earthly goods of their owners were in- 
vested. Wagons drew it from town to town ; boats bore 
it from clime to clime, and the winds wafted it from 
nation to nation ; and merchants bought and sold it, by 
wholesale and retail, with precisely the same feelings on 
the part of the seller, buyer and by-stander as are felt at 
the selling and buying of plows, beef, bacon, or any other 
of the real necessaries of life. Universal public opinion 
not only tolerated, but recognized and adopted its use. 

It is true, that even then it was known and acknowl- 
edged that many were greatly injured by it ; but none 
seemed to think the injury arose from the use of a bad 
thing, but from the abuse of a very good thing. The 
victims of it were to be pitied and compassionated, just 
as are the heirs of consumption, and other hereditary 
diseases. Their failing was treated as a misfortune, and 
not as a crime, or even as a disgrace. 

If then, what I have been saying is true, is it wonder- 



90 



AK ADDRESS. 



ful, that some should think and act now, as all thought 
and. acted twenty years ago, and is it just to assail, con- 
demn, or despise them for doing so? The universal 
sense of mankind, on any subject, is an argument, or at 
least an influence, not easily overcome. The success of 
the argument in favor of the existence of an over-rulinsj 
Providence, mainly depends upon that sense ; and men 
ought not, in justice, to be denounced for yielding to it 
in any case, or giving it up slowly, especially when they 
are backed by interest, fixed habits, or burning appetites 
Another error, as it seems to me, into which the old 
reformers fell, was the position that all habitual drunk- 
ards were utterly incorrigible, and therefore, must be 
turned adrift, and damned without remedy, in order that 
the grace of temperance might abound, to the temperate 
then, and to all mankind some hundreds of years there- 
after. There is in this something so repugnant to 
humanity, so uncharitable, so cold-blooded and feeling- 
less, that it never did, nor never can enlist the enthusiasm 
of a popular cause. We could not love the man who 
taught it — we could not hear him with patience. The 
heart could not throw open its portals to it, the generous 
man could not adopt it, it could not mix with his blood. 
It looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing fathers 
and brothers overboard, to lighten the boat for our se- 
curity — that the noble-minded shrank from the manifest 
meanness of the thing. And besides this, the benefits of 
a reformation to be effected by such a system, were too 
remote in point of time, to warmly engage many in itg 
behalf. Few can be induced to labor exclusively for pos- 
terity ; and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity 



AN ADDRESS. 91 

has done nothing for us ; and theorize on it as we may, 
practically we shall do ver)^ little for it unless we are made 
to think, we are, at the same time, doing something for 
ourselves. 

What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, 
to ask or expect a whole community to rise up and labor 
for the temporal happiness of others, after themselves 
shall be consigned to the dust, a majority of which com- 
itiunity take no pains whatever to secure their own 
eternal welfare at no greater distant day. Great distance 
in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and 
render quiescent the human mind. Pleasures to be en- 
joyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and 
gone, are but little regarded, even in our own cases, and 
much less in the cases of others. 

Still, in addition to this, there is something so ludicrous, 
in promises of good, or threats of evil, a great way off, 
as to render the whole subject with which they are con- 
nected, easily turned into ridicule. " Better lay down 
that spade you're stealing, Paddy — if you don't, you'll 
pay for it at the day of judgment." " Be the powers, if 
ye'll credit me so long I'll take another jist." 

By the Washingtonians this system of consigning the 
habitual drunkard to hopeless ruin is repudiated. They 
adopt a more enlarged philanthropy, they go for present 
as well as future good. They labor for all now living, 
as well as hereafter to live. They teach hope to all — de- 
spair to none. As applying to their cause, they deny 
the doctrine of unpardonable sin ; as in Christianity it is 
taught, so in this they teach — 



92 



AN ADDRESS. 



" While the lamp holds out to burn, 
The vilest sinner may return." 

And, what is a matter of the most profound congratula- 
tion, they, by experiment upon experiment, and example 
upon example, prove the maxim to be no less true in the 
one case than in the other. On every hand we behold 
those, who but yesterday were the chief of sinners, now 
the chief apostles of the cause. Drunken devils are cast 
out by ones, by sevens, by legions ; and their unfortunate 
victims, like the poor possessed, who was redeemed from 
his long and lonely wanderings in the tombs, are publish- 
ing to the ends of the earth how great things have been 
done for them. 

To these new champions, and this new system of tac- 
tics, our late success is mainly owing ; and to them we 
must mainly look for the final consummation. The ball 
is now rolling gloriously on, and none are so able as they 
to increase its speed, and its bulk — to add to its mo- 
mentum and its magnitude — even though unlearned in 
letters, for this task none are so well educated. To fit 
them for this work they have been taught in the true 
school. They have been in that gulf, from which they 
would teach others the means of escape. They have 
passed that prison wall, which others have long declared 
impassable ; and who that has not, shall dare to weigh 
opinions with them as to the mode of passing ? 

But if it be true, as I have insisted, that those who 
have suffered by intemperance personally, and have re- 
formed, are the most powerful and efficient instruments 
to push the reformation to ultimate success, it does not 
follow that those who have not suffered have no part left 



AN ADDRESS. 



93 



them to perform. Whether or not the world would be 
vastly benefitted by a total and final banishment from it 
of all intoxicating drinks, seems to me not now an open 
question. Three-fourths of mankind confess the afifirm- 
ative with their tongues ; and, I believe, all the rest 
acknowledge it in their hearts. 

Ought any, then, to refuse their aid in doing what 
the good of the whole demands ? Shall he who cannot 
do much, be, for that reason, excused if he do nothing ? 
"But," says one, "what good can I do by signing the 
pledge? I never drink, even without signing." This 
question has already been asked and answered more than 
a million of times. Let it be answered once more. For 
the man, suddenly or in any other way, to break off 
from the use of drams, who has indulged in them for a 
long course of years, and until his appetite for them has 
fjrown ten or a hundred fold strono-er and more cravirre 
than any natural appetite can be, requires a most power- 
ful moral effort. In such an undertaking he needs every 
moral support and influence that can possibly be brought 
to his aid, and thrown around him. And not only so, 
but every moral prop should be taken from whatever 
argument might rise in his mind, to lure him to his back- 
sliding. When he casts his eyes around him, he should be 
able to see all that he respects, all that he admires, all 
that he loves, kindly and anxiously pointing him onward, 
and none beckoning him back to his former misesaule 
" wallowing in the mire." 

But it is said by some, that men will think and act 
tor themselves ; that none will disuse spirits or anything 
else brcause his neighbors do ; and that moral influence 



94 AN ADDRESS. 

is not that powerful engine contended for. Let us ex- 
amine this. Let me ask the man who could maintain 
this position most stiffly, what compensation he will 
accept to go to church some Sunday and sit during the 
sermon with his wife's bonnet upon his head? Not a 
trifle, I'll venture. And why not ? There would be 
nothing irreligious in it, nothing immoral, nothing un- 
comfortable — then why not ? Is it not because there 
would be something egregiously unfashionable in it? 
Then it is the influence of fashion ; and vv^hat is the 
influence of fashion but the influence that other people's 
actions have on our own actions — the strono- inclination 
each of us feels to do as we see all our neiMibors do ? 
Nor is the influence of fashion confined to any particu- 
lar thing or class of things. It is just as strong on one 
subject as another. Let us make it as unfashionable to 
withhold our names from the temperance pledge, as for 
husbands to wear their wives' bonnets to church, and 
instances will be just as rare in the one case as the other. 

"But," say some, "we are no drunkards, and we shall 
not acknowledge ourselves such, by joining a reformed 
drunkards' society, whatever our influence might be." 
Surely, no Christian will adhere to this objection. 

If they believe as they profess, that Omnipotence 
condescended to take on himself the form of sinful man, 
and, as such, to die an ignominious death for their sakes. 
surely, they will not refuse submission to the infinitely 
lesser condescension, for the temporal, and perhaps 
eternal salvation, of a large, erring, and unfortunate class 
of their fellow-creatures. Nor is the condescension very 
great. In my judgment such of us as have never fallen 



AN ADDRESS. 95 

victims, have been spared more from the absence of appe 
tite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those 
who have. Indeed, I believe, if we take habitual drunk- 
ards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an 
advantageous comparison with those of any other class. 
There seems ever to have been a proneness in the bril- 
liant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice — the demon 
of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking 
the blood of genius and generosity. What one of us 
but- can call to mind some relative, more promising in 
youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to 
his rapacity? He ever seems to have gone forth like 
the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay, if not 
the first, the fairest born of every family. Shall he now 
be arrested in his desolating career? In that arrest, all 
can give aid that will ; and who shall be excused that can, 
and will not? Far around as human breath has ever 
blown, he keeps our fathers, our brothers, our sons, and our 
friends prostrate in the chains of moral death To all 
, the living, everywhere, we cry, "Come, sound the moral 
trump, that these may rise and stand up an exceeding 
great army." — " Come from the four winds, O breath ! and 
breathe upon these slain, that they may live." If the 
relative grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the 
o-reat amount of human misery they alleviate, and the 
small amount they inflict, then, indeed, will this be the 
grandest the world shall ever have seen, 

Of our political revolution of '76 we are all justly 
proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom far 
exceeding that of any other nations of the earth. In it the 
world has found a solution of the long mooted problem. 



96 AN ADDRESS. 

as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it ^Yas 
the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and 
expand into the universal liberty of mankind, 

But, with all these glorious results, past, present,, and 
to come, it had its evils too. It breathed forth famine, 
swam in blood, and rode in fire; and long, long after, the 
orphans' cry and the widows' wail continued to break the 
sad silence that ensued. These were the orice, the inev 
itable price, paid for the blessings it bought 

Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we 
shall find a stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery man- 
umitted, a greater tyrant deposed — in it, more of want 
supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. 
By it, no orphans starving, no widows weeping. By it, 
none wounded in feeling, none injured in interest ; even 
the dram-maker and dram-seller will have glided into 
other occupations so gradually as never to have felt the 
change, and will stand ready to join all others in the uni- 
versal song of gladness. And what a noble ally this, to 
the cause of political freedom, with such an aid, its 
march cannot fail to be on and on, till every son of earth 
shall drink in rich fruition the sorrow-quenching draughts 
of perfect liberty. Happy day, when, all appetites con- 
trolled, all passions subdued, all matter subjugated, mind, 
all-conquering mind, shall live and move, the monarch of 
the world ! Glorious consummation ! Hail, fall of fury ! 
Reign of reason, all hail ! 

And when the victory shall be complete — when there 
shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth — 
how proud the title of that Land, which may truly claim 
to be the birth-place and the cradle of both those revo- 



AiY AnVRESS. 



97 



lutions that shall have ended in that victory. How 
nobly distinguished that people, who shall have planted, 
and nurtured to maturity, both the political and moral 
freedom of their species. 

This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the 
birthday of Washington — we are met to celebrate this 
day. Washington is the mightiest name of earth — long 
since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still mightiest 
in moral reformation. On that name a euloi^v is ex- 
pected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or 
glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible. 
Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the 
name, and in its naked, deathless splendor leave it 
shiniuij on. 




LINCOLN HOMESTEAD, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS. 



O. H. OLDROYD, 
State Custodian. 




LINCOLN MONUMENT, SPRINGFIELD. ILLINOIS 



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